best selling dc comics of 2013

Market report and year summary by comics historian Terry Hoknes of www.HoknesComics.com

DC Comics had an incredible year during 2013.

In total they had 65 new #1 issues released including ongoing series, mini-series, one-shots and re-numberings.

They also featured 11 annuals and 10 entries from 2nd printings.

This chart only covers Jan-Nov as the Dec sales figures are not yet released until the new year.

Here we list and rank all of them and show the diverse and successful year that Image had.

This chart shows the sales figures for every issue released during 2013 of any new series started in 2013.

Injustice Gods Among Us was the most prolific new title with 11 issues released during the year.

Five high profile new series debuted with sales over 100,000 copies each.

Justice League America #1 was the best selling comic book of 2013 with print run over 300,000 due to 54 different covers.

Harley Quinn #0 was the highest selling comic of the year not reliant on a number of variant covers.

This chart not only shows what sold well and what didn’t but it also is very useful to see which books have kept their sales figures up and are likely to be the books that in the next year stay hot and could potentially rise in value. The main ingredient is constant and steady sales OR better yet increasing sales month to month. (The later is very rare in the comic business)

It is very common for #1 issues to be ordered higher than subsequent issues but after a few issues if the title is truly popular sales should level out. In the past this has happened to successful titles such as Batman.

But in 2013 there are no clear winners in that category.

Retailers usually get it right! In most cases they order the right amount of product.

Once in a while they over order a product making the book virtually worthless in the secondary market.

The rare occasion retailers under order a title since they don’t know what to expect with a new series and these are the books that always have the secondary market price gains.

This year that happened to: Injustice Gods Among Us. The hottest DC back issue series of the year was predictable as sales started low with #1 and #2 before gaining each month. Sales actually peaked with #6 which is almost unheard of. In fact sales of #11 were still higher than that of the #1 debut issue. This translated into higher prices for back issues as demand kept growing and stabilizing. Injustice #1 sold only 20,000 copies and only ranks as the #47 best selling first DC issue of 2013.

The Wake #1 started out much stronger with 44,000 copies and then dipped predictably with #2 but sales actually started to increase with issue #4 and have stayed strong helping the early issues all go to 2nd printings.

Trinity Of Sin Pandora #1 saw very small drop in sales by issue #2 showing instantly that the demand was stronger than expected causing sellouts of the first 2 issues and reprints and a price gain on those 2 issues as well as the print run actually grew by #3.

Batman Lil Gotham featuring Batman and Harley Quinn had fairly small orders for #1 and sales stabliized for issues #2 and #3 before increasing for #4.

While sales have not grown “Constantine” has had stayed more consistent than most titles and it has dipped slowly with later issues.

He Man And The Masters Of The Universe #1 has shown small drops in orders and has stayed fairly strong still having about 60 percent of its original orders as late as issue #8.

Collider #1 opened fairly weak at only 15,000 but sales have stayed at actually fairly strong for the small numbers and has only dipped 33% after 5 issues and a name change to FDP.

The rarest new series of 2013 from DC was “Insurgent”. Quietly debuting in January to sales of only 7500 copies and quickly dropping so rapidly that #3 did not even chart selling less than 4000 copies and DC even cancelled the issues after #3.

The Wake (Directors Cut) #1 had a low print run of only 5300 copies which is one of the rarest DC #1’s of the year and could prove to be more valuable in the future if the interest in the regular series stays strong.

The other rarer new #1 of 2013 was “Time Warp” a sci-fi one-shot with sales under 10,000 copies featuring big name creators.

Tom Strong mini-series barely passed 10,000 mark and dropped almost 50% by the end of the 6 issue run.

While its common for a new series to lose up to 30% of its initial order from #1 to #2 its more important to see if sales stabilize or continue to drop after issue #3. Some big droppers in sales and not likely to show increases in the future include:

DC released 11 new #1 Annuals in 2013 and the best selling by far was the Batman and Robin Annual #1 hitting 52,000.

The rarest new DC Annual of 2013 was Injustice Gods Among Us with only 19,000.

The best selling non-superhero DC #1 of the year was Sandman Overture with a hefty 93,000. The #2 ranking new series was The Wake with 44,000. Constantine came in with 37,000. Coffin Hill and Hinterkind both came in with a decent 21,000 each.

Thanks to John Jackson Miller at www.comichron.com for the initial Diamond sales figures data

You can see complete monthly Diamond sales chart data and more stats at his site !

I am always happy to hear your comments and thoughts/criticisms on any of my posts.

Terry Hoknes (author) of Hoknes Comics loves analyzing statistics and watching the growth and fall of comic titles over a period of time. He sells all of the latest hot back issue secondary market new comics and all new Diamond products at www.HoknesComics.com and also self-publishes a series of books called “Investing In Comic Books” that focus on the Golden, Silver and Bronze ages of comics. hoknes@hotmail.com Read more about these hot sold out comics at www.comicsheatingup.net